If you're searching for PE-foam ribbons, rubber roofing materials, or typing "where to find foam board" into Google, start with the Momentive website before you call a distributor. The short version? Search terms matter, but supplier verification matters more. I've spent the last five years buying supplies for a 45-person specialty contractor—roughly $120,000 a year across about a dozen vendors. In that time, the closest I've come to an expensive mistake was assuming "foam" meant one thing.

Here's what you need to know: Momentive GE silicone kept showing up every time our senior engineer asked for "the GE silicone stuff." When I finally looked at the Momentive website, I found product families listed by application, not just a wall of SKU numbers. That made a huge difference.

Why the Momentive website became my first stop

When I took over purchasing in 2020, I inherited a spreadsheet full of vendor names and no notes. One recurring request from the maintenance crew was for silicone sealant and foam backing materials. An old crew member called it "GE silicone," so I typed "Momentive GE silicone" into a search engine and ended up on the Momentive website.

Unlike some manufacturer sites that hide everything behind a login, Momentive's public pages list product groups like silicone elastomers and sealants. That helped me translate a vague request into a product family. I want to say the first search took about twenty minutes, but don't quote me on that. Either way, it beat calling three distributors who all asked for specs I did not have.

According to Momentive's own product literature (momentive.com), the company's silicone roots go back to GE Silicones. I mention that because it explains why "Momentive GE silicone" is still a common search phrase, and why our engineer trusted the brand before I did.

Where to find foam board (and why that's the wrong question)

Let me save you the rabbit hole. "Where to find foam board" is one of those searches that makes sense until you look at the results. Craft stores, insulation suppliers, shipping material companies—they all sell foam board. None of them may have what you actually need.

For us, the thing the crew called "foam board" was actually PE-foam ribbons: closed-cell polyethylene foam cords used as backer rods in expansion joints. They fill the gap before silicone sealant is applied, so the sealant bonds to the sides instead of the bottom. If you buy the wrong density or the wrong shape, the sealant job can fail. People assume foam board is foam board. The reality is that density, cell structure, and temperature rating all matter.

So if you're trying to seal a joint, search for "backer rod" or "PE-foam ribbons" instead of "foam board." If you need insulation, ordinary foam board may be fine. The lesson is to match the search term to the application, not to the word you remember.

Rubber roofing and the silicone connection

Rubber roofing came up during our 2024 vendor consolidation project. We had an EPDM roof that was not ready to be replaced, but it had leaks around the seams. The roofer we used wanted to tear it off. Our engineer asked me to look at silicone roof coatings instead.

Why silicone? The short version is that silicone coatings can work over many existing rubber roofs, including aged EPDM, without the same peeling issues you can get with some acrylic coatings. I'm not a chemist, so I checked the product data on the Momentive website and called the manufacturer's technical line. That's the step I used to skip.

Here's the counterintuitive part: the more experienced the crew, the more likely they are to stick with "what we've always done." That's fine when the situation is the same. But when the roofing system changes, the old habit can lead you to replace a roof that could have been restored with a coating. I'm not saying silicone coating is always the answer. I'm saying it's worth a half-hour of reading before you approve a tear-off quote.

The checklist that saved me more than once

I learned about prevention the hard way. In 2021, I found a supplier who quoted a great price for a bulk order of silicone cartridges. It was maybe 15 percent lower than our regular vendor's quote. I placed the order. Then the invoice arrived—handwritten, no tax ID, no proper line items. Finance rejected the expense report. That mistake cost us about $2,400 out of the department budget, and it made me look careless in front of my VP.

People think the cheapest quote means the vendor is more efficient. What they don't see is which costs are hidden or deferred. The writing on that handwritten receipt was clean. The paperwork was not.

Now I run a short verification checklist before any order:

Five minutes of verification beats five days of correction. That's not a slogan. It's the math from my own purchase history. I process maybe 60 to 80 orders a year—around 70, give or take. Since I started using the checklist, I've had exactly one rejected invoice, and that was because the vendor changed bank accounts without telling us.

The limits of my little sample

I want to be honest about boundaries. My experience is based on small-volume purchases for one contractor's facility team. I've only worked with domestic distributors and standard lead times. If you're buying railcar quantities or specifying materials for an aerospace application, your process will be different. I do not pretend that my sourcing shortcut counts as engineering advice.

I can't speak to international sourcing with any confidence. What works for a small facilities team may not work for a global supply chain.

What I know is this: start with the Momentive website when the name "GE silicone" is stuck in your head, use precise product names like PE-foam ribbons instead of "foam board," verify the supplier can actually invoice you, and build a checklist so you don't have to relearn the same lesson twice. Then again, maybe your experience will be different. Mine started with a search for "where to find foam board" and ended with a better rubber roofing decision. I'll take that trade.